Introduction to the Old Testament (Introduction to Religion)

It's awesome! It's rented so obviously there are highlights or underlined passages, but nothing that hinders your reading/ability to read what it says. I'm enjoying it so far!

I enjoyed the content of the book which is so informative. It is relevant to my area of class's research

great

This book strikes me as taking too friendly an approach toward those who believe in multiple authors of Isaiah and does not come down hard enough on the JEDP theory of OT Higher Criticism. This is not good in a day of postmodernism when many no longer believe in objective or absoolute truth.Part of my training in Foundations of OT Interpretation was to understand and critique the JEDP theory which Dr. Oswalt did not accept and Dr. Arnold is no fan of either. I'm more like Dr. Oswalt in both critiquing the JEDP theory and holding to the Jewish and the church father's view of one Isaiah authorship behind the book.Otherwise, the book does contain good information and helpful explanations. It's brevity in comparison with the lengthy OT Introduction by R.K. Harrison is a reflection of our times in which students are not as interested or willing to read like was true 30 years ago. My NT History and Criticism professor, Dr. Wang, once complained to me about how students "no read like they once did." From my perspective, I think every generation of seminary students needs to have a Dr. Oswalt and Dr. Wang in their educational experience.

100% satisfied!

Prof. Arnold has written an informative, engaging, and extremely useful introductory textbook for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. I recently used the textbook for an undergraduate (mostly first-year) Introduction to the Old Testament course at a Christian university. The course provides substantial background to the Old Testament and is constructed in a way that ties the various sections of the Old Testament together in ways that book-by-book introductions do not. The theme of emerging monotheism is a useful way to look at the religious development in ancient Israel, and reflected in the various strata of the Old Testament. I used the textbook to supplement lectures and other readings, and to provide a background and overarching theme to the course, which may not be possible using more traditional Introductions. Students were very engaged with the readings and had positive feedback. Additionally, the tools available from the publishers website are very useful. For example, one of the resources available is a pre-developed study guide. I adapted this and used it as a reading guide for the students to fill out and submit after each reading. This kept students accountable to the reading and provided some indication to me that they got the most important points from each chapter. I highly recommend this textbook for introductory classes, which is the intended target, and I will use this textbook again.

A reader will definitely come away with an elementary understanding of current academic thought relating to the reliability of the Old Testament. The author takes a balanced approach in evaluating contemporary arguments or authorship and theology, but clearly and often assumes against traditional views, sometimes completely on assumption irrespective of its weakness. Not bad, but not sound, in my opinion.

The author chooses to view the Old Testament as "literature," that is, a collection of fictional texts. By doing so, he rejects the Old Testament as the sacred history of the Hebrews, a revelation of God to humans. He claims the Old Testament is not consistently monotheistic, ignoring or minimizing the overwhelming testimony of the scriptures that there is only one God. For example, the creation account in Genesis clearly implies a singular creator; or the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and the many accounts of men crafting an idol of wood or stone and then stupidly worshipping it. The Bible does assert that there are other spiritual agents at work, lower-case gods, that is, angels or fallen angels. But nowhere does the bible recognize these spiritual forces as at all comparable to the one true God. Since Arnold doesn't accept the veracity of the Old Testament, the value of his account is severely limited.Arnold notes that Genesis makes absolutely no reference to any other gods than Yahweh, and in fact, Genesis shows the one true God consistently acting alone; yet Arnold still claims, with no reason or evidence, that the original author or authors of Genesis believed that other gods existed in addition to Yahweh. Contemporary scholars are irrationally biased against the idea that God could have been revealed himself as the one true God to Adam, Noah, Abraham and his children, and Moses; despite overwhelming evidence. They don't believe that the Bible is God's revelation to humans. Modern scholars are obessed with so-called textual issues at the expense of the actual message of the Bible.Arnold spends a large amount of space considering the possibility that the events in the first books of the Old Testament never happened, but almost no time defending the Bible as God's Word and revelation. We can hardly consider the lack of archeological evidence as significant, since the events described would not have left any enduring physical evidence (they built a tent during the Exodus, not a pyramid!), and whatever physical evidence might have been left would certainly evaporated by the passage of time. He describes the book of Exodus as a "historical novel" (110), and claims that it was never intended by its authors to present historical events! There is no discussion of God's crucial revelation of his name at the burning bush. After the chapter on Exodus, I stopped reading and found an introduction to the Old Testament that accepts the Bible as sacred history and God's revelation.